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Twilight of the Gods: Page 814

814

And here we have Wagner’s strong veto:

[P. 74] “… the dauntless judge of all things human and divine, the latest product of the Historical school of applied philosophy [Wagner refers here to his erstwhile friend Nietzsche, but could just as logically be speaking of Feuerbach, who had long ago taught Wagner almost everything which Nietzsche would later propose], will never touch an archive not first subjected to the tests of Chemistry or [P. 75] Physics in general. Here all necessity for a metaphysical explanation of those phenomena in the life of the universe which remain a little unintelligible to purely physical apprehension is rejected with the bitterest scorn. So far as I can understand the doctrines of the pundits, the upright, cautious Darwin, who pretended to little more than an hypothesis, would seem to have given the most decisive impetus to the reckless claims of that historical school by the results of his researches in the province of biology. (…) The gravest defects I deem the banishment from the new world-system of the term spontaneous [i.e., Siegfried’s alleged freedom from all preconditions and influences], of spontaneity itself … . For we now are told that, as no change has ever taken place without sufficient ground, so the most astonishing phenomena – of which the work of ‘genius’ forms the most important instance – result from various causes, very many and not quite ascertained as yet, ‘tis true, but which we shall find it uncommonly easy to get at when Chemistry has once laid hold on Logic. Meanwhile however, the chain of logical deductions not stretching quite so far as an explanation of the work of Genius [here Wagner seems to be actually paraphrasing Feuerbach’s remarks in extract 241F above], inferior nature-forces generally regarded as faults of temperament, such as impetuosity of will, one-sided energy and stubbornness, are called in to keep the thing as much as possible upon the realm of Physics. As the progress of the Natural Sciences thus involves the exposure of every mystery of Being as mere imaginary secrets after all, the sole concern must henceforth be the act of knowing [we are reminded of Alberich, who waited at Fafner’s cave for millennia, as one who knows and watches]; but intuitive knowledge appears to be entirely excluded, since it might lead tometaphysical vagaries, namely to the cognisance of relations which are rightly withheld from abstract scientific comprehension until such time as Logic shall have settled them upon the evidence of Chemistry.

[P. 76] Though we have only superficially described the issue of the newer, so-called ‘historical’ method of Science … , I believe we are justified in concluding that the purely comprehending Subject, enthroned on the cathedra, is left with sole right to existence [say, Alberich and/or Hagen]. A worthy close to the world-tragedy! (…) … to Art – which the Goliath of Knowledge [Hagen, i.e., Feuerbach or Nietzsche] more and more regards as a mere rudiment from the earliest stage of human reason, not unlike the os coccyx we still retain from the animal tail – he only pays attention when it offers archaeologic prospects of his launching some Historical thesis … [Wagner is actually alluding to his erstwhile friend Nietzsche here, whose relationship to Wagner in many respects parallels Hagen’s relationship with Siegfried].” [924W-{3-7/78} Public and Popularity: PW Vol. VI, p. 74-76]

In other words, Wagner feared that with the exposure of religion and art as cowardly evasions of the truth, based on man’s denial of Mother Nature (Wotan’s original sin against all that was, is, and will be, which Alberich designed his curse on his Ring to punish), and which depend on self-deception for happiness, religion and art would die out as value-givers, and the scientific man, Alberich and Hagen, would be the sole humans left standing, the heirs to this world, as Wotan himself put it with disgust in his confession to Bruennhilde in V.2.2, when he complained that